Former AKB48 idol group member Rina Kawaei (Ride Your Wave, live-action Ajin, left in the image below) and actress Momoko Fukuchi (live-action Wasteful Days of High School Girl, right) will take on the role. lead Chihiro with Kanna Hashimoto and Mone Kamishiraishi when Hayao Miyazaki’s stage play and Studio Ghibli’s animated film Spirited Away return next year.
Spirited Away: Live on Stage, will return to Tokyo in March, before going overseas to the London Coliseum from April to July. At the same time, it will also visit Nagoya in April, Fukuoka from April to May, Osaka from May to June and Sapporo in June.
All four actresses will take part in alternate performances throughout the run in Tokyo. The staff have announced that Hashimoto and Kamishiraishi will star in the London run, but they are still determining exactly which actress will star in which concert in different cities in Japan. Original and foreign.
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The stage play debuted in Japan with two different cast members last year. The play first premiered at the Imperial Theater from February to March 2022, then toured to Osaka in April, Fukuoka in May, Sapporo in June and Nagoya in June and July with total of 102 performances. Several performances of stage plays in Fukuoka were canceled due to Hashimoto’s diagnosis of COVID-19, and similarly a number of performances in Nagoya were canceled due to Park, Kamishiraishi, and some staff and performers. member also infected with COVID-19.
The stage play just completed its performance from August 13 to 26 at the Misono-za Theater in Nagoya. During that run, Hashimoto and Kamishiraishi repeated their shared Chihiro run.
Tony and Olivier Award-winning directors and Royal Shakespeare Company Emeritus Associate Director John Caird (Les Misérables, Nicholas Nickleby, Daddy Long Legs) write the script and direct the production.
GKIDS theatrical shows a recorded performance of both versions of the stage play. The version with Hashimoto aired in North America on April 23 and 25, and the version with Kamishiraishi aired on April 27 and May 2.
Spirited Away was previously the highest-grossing Japanese film worldwide until Demon Slayer – Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train broke the record. Spirited Away remains the only non-English-language title to win the Academy Awards’ Best Animated Feature, the award it won in 2003.
Source: Natalie Comics